Originally posted by IvanSong:
Just curious, what kind of laws of the universe that teach you to be good?
Appreciate your sincere comments ... so you have compartmentalized morality, conscience, good and evil. But i think there is a fluid interaction between these factors that you cannot address one without the other. Could you operationalize these terms further?
If not, about conscience, i believe like you do, that it is inherent and "naturally given" and of course, i would subscribe the giver as God, since we've been made in His image.
From the atheist POV, how would that conscience come about, since we're supposedly animals (or very closely related to them)? It is this conscience which made me ask the question in the 1st place, how do we differentiate good and bad? How do we determine the "ought tos" and the "should nots" in life? Why is there even a conscience in us in the 1st place?
For me, Christianity cannot be defined without the person of Jesus, whom He said he was the way to God, and if you know him, you would know how God is like. As such, I dont think that upon careful study, the bible would make anyone a bigot or male chauvinist. Modern christianity likes to posit the faith as something based upon love, good feelings and subtle humanism, but i take the view that true christianity cannot do without a God who hates sin, and a God who loves. That said, i've read the bible since young, and i don't think i'm "damaged" in any sense. But really, i've seen people who have grown up with the bible and richer because of it, people who have grown up without it and lead great lives too, but i think this issue far transcends our personal experience of it.
Another reason why i asked this was that atheists often suggested that since there was evil in the world, then God cannot exist, because he is supposedly good.
But if good and evil are subjective, then the problem of evil doesnt exist in an atheistic universe. Since everything is relative, there is no God, then there is absolute moral standard and nothing is wrong. The torture of little children is also not wrong, it might be painful, but it is not wrong (or as you mentioned earlier, the eating of human beings is amoral). It is morally wrong in a theistic universe, and therefore, there is a problem of evil of perhaps the psychological or emotional sort, but philosophically, the answer to the problem of evil is you don't have an absolute standard of good by which to measure evil in an atheist's universe. You can only have that in a theistic universe.
i appreciate your opinion and i respect it.
to clarify your first question, yes, the reason why there is a fluid interaction between morality and goodness is because of human perceptions. but if you were to pull them apart and analyse them individually, you'd see the differences like how i've just mentioned.
many christians questioned that since conscience is naturally given, it must be from God. but to me, it is innate and hereditary. moreover, they think that this earth is about 4000 to 6000 years old created by an intelligent designer who scientifically cannot be disproved. and this creates another unsolved problem: who create the designer? well, i remembered Bertrand Russell quoted his famous china teapot example. imagine that there is a theory of a china teapot orbiting around the sun. one cannot disprove of its existence as it cannot be seen by our naked eyes or the current telescope. as we cannot show its evidence nor disprove of its non-existence, it would be absurd to claim that it does exists after all.
furthermore, there are so many gods or deities that many of us do not believe in. some people, including christians do not believe in Zeus or Hercules, therefore, they are Zeus-atheists or Hercules-atheists. many people also do not believe in toothfairies, hence they are toothfairy atheists. we are all atheists in our own ways, but some of us have gone one god further and that is the God Almighty.
in addition, i refuse to come to a stark conclusion that God exists not just simply because i felt his "presence" (not sure if it is just emotions running through me), or read the bible, or been to church, or served in any ministries, once upon a time. i feel that people can do without God and are doing great themselves simply because they lead a good life, they know what their objectives are in life, and they work hard and enjoy themselves. i'm not surprised to see free thinkers striving to make a difference in society for a good cause of course.
atheists are humans too. i feel that it sounds rather like an accusation to call every free thinker an atheist, because we don't need to be labeled like "atheists", because everyone of us have our own way of thinking and living our lives. sure, there are many other atheists who are bad or evil, as well as there are many other christians who are black sheeps. and many of them, i'm not surprised, are fundamentalists who take the bible literally, and start to create trouble. i'm sure u are aware about that. and this is what i'm concerned about, regarding what is written in the bible that cause many primitive people who didn't know any better to commit crimes in the name of God.
however, regarding free thinkers, i'm focusing more towards those who live their lives based upon their own principles and moral values that they learn from their many phases in life, including me. and it's not that i strongly disagree that God exists, because i cannot prove that he doesn't exist, neither will i be able to prove his existence. so, all in all, i'm rather agnostic about this whole issue, but it's not that i dun wanna believe, but rather, i choose to remain skeptical about such phenomena that still remains debatable till this day, due to its lack of evidence. and i refuse to come to a conclusion because this phenomena still remains a mystery... at least, to me.
having said that, i respect your view that humans are created in the image of God. but for me, i believe that we have a common ancestor (thanks to my growing interests in science ever since my entry to a course of my passion), not because we come from apes, but rather, we evolved not from apes, but through stages of genetic and biological improvement of our physical characteristics throughout our history of survival and adaptation. well, evolution does provide a theory of the big bang and the formation of life from the very smallest living organisms, though it is still debatable, it has revolutionalised science and biology altogether and without such theory, or i would say, without science and discovery, we would not have survived till this age of information. all these things that we are doing are part and parcel of our survival and adaptation as living organisms. the only difference between us and the animals is our unique feature, known as the brain. imagine if we take away the brain of a human, he would be very vulnerable to other creatures. firstly, we cannot run as fast as the cheetah, we would be eaten by them. we cannot swim as fast as the whale, we would perish in water if we mess with them. we cannot stand the cold like the polar bears who have thick white fur to keep them warm. as such, our brain helps us adapt to our environment by making weapons to hunt down animals and use their special features as our survival aids. realising that we are vulnerable, humans have evolved such that they began to discover more for themselves in order to survive in this harsh planet.
good and evil are subjective, but like i said, our conscience determines what is moral and immoral, or amoral. i did not say that everything is relative. but rather, my point is that in this world, not everything is pure black and white. there are gray areas too, and as such, this gray area is either amoral or simply are subjected to personal preferences, perceptions, cultures, or opinions.
i understand that religion is a source of guide for people to follow, but if that's the case, then let it be a guide for people to follow... but why God? why in the name of God?
if religion has moral codes for people to learn from or cultivate their own morality, like any other moral philosophies, it is certainly not a problem for me. but what worries me is that if one is told to love by God, then it would be as good as not loving at all, because i don't think that we should be told to love others because God says so, or the holy scripture says so, or the church says so. love should be voluntary just as it is hereditary and not coerced or instructed by God. if one doesn't love another person, that is his problem because he is going to have a hard time getting along. but as one live his life longer enough, he will know that loving others is the key to build relationships. it is this slow and care free process of going through life learning the bitter lessons that makes us stronger as a person, before passing on our lessons learned to others as a form of sharing of experiences, rather than leaning on our faith like a crutch. it still depends on how one sees it still. but this is how i view life.
i appreciate people who share gospels or other religions to me which opens me up to different views or individual beliefs, and it also gives me a chance to know more about different cultures and faiths. i have no problems with that but it would be good if they could just keep their religion to themselves rather than strongly evangelising their faiths, which kind of turns me off sometimes. haha.